


But wait. Rewind.

by cricketcheesecake



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Future Fic, I had to do it!, M/M, Parenthood, Post-Canon, basically them moving to hell's kitchen and becoming dads, magical realism vibes tbh, many New York references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:49:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricketcheesecake/pseuds/cricketcheesecake
Summary: When they meet her, the soft, downy hair on top of her head is the same color as a fire hydrant. Bright and loud. Way too obnoxious for a newborn.They name her Poppy. She has wide brown eyes, and hair brighter than Ian’s. Her tiny hands grab onto adult fingers, and she’s got a toothless smile that breaks hearts.But wait. Rewind.Stateville Correctional Center.





	But wait. Rewind.

When they meet her, the soft, downy hair on top of her head is the same color as a fire hydrant. Bright and loud. Way too obnoxious for a newborn. 

 

They name her Poppy. She has wide brown eyes, and hair brighter than Ian’s. Her tiny hands grab onto adult fingers, and she’s got a toothless smile that breaks hearts. 

 

But wait. Rewind. 

 

Stateville Correctional Center. 

 

One year and 271 days into his sentence, Ian gets released on an unusually warm October day. And then, there was the thing Mickey refused to talk about while Ian was in prison: the differences in their sentence length. Two years and four days are spent filled with tense, increasingly hopeful sentiment as Mickey refuses to believe Ian will wait for him. Ian spends two years and four days visiting, working, proving. He gets _Mick_ tattooed over his heart. 

 

Mickey gets released on an unusually cold June day, and Ian’s arms wrap around him like a blood vow. 

 

“Don’t fucking leave me now,” Mickey chokes out, his tattooed fingers turning white and achy as they clutch the back of Ian’s hoodie. 

 

Ian whispers, “I’m never leaving you again, Mick.” And Mickey believes him. Truly, absolutely, completely believes him in a way he never did before. 

 

Four hours after Mickey’s probation ends, Ian tries to convince him to leave Chicago. Ian wants to leave the city, and not just to relocate to Rockford, or a shitty suburb in Illinois where they could live within spitting reach of the Southside

 

Ian tells Mickey they should move to New York City. 

 

_Fuck that, firecrotch._  But this is is not something Ian decides on a whim, which is part of the reason why Mickey is so terrified. He’s afraid of New York, its vibrancy, the things it might do to Ian. He’s freaked out by how much rational thought Ian’s put into this. He’s afraid he might lose Ian to the pulsing, neon blood of the men who live in New York City. He fucking remembers the way he felt when Ian would grind on older men at the club for money, ok? He fucking remembers. 

 

But. Ian wants more for them. He wants more for Mickey. He knows Mickey is scared, but it’s always been this way, hasn’t it? Ian pushing Mickey beyond his comfort zone, and it sometimes ends in blood and betrayal, but, other times, it frees Mickey from cages he was born in. 

 

“Ian.”

 

“Yeah?”  


 

“I’ll go.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

A pause. 

 

Mickey adds, “Just don’t fucking leave me once we get there, asshole.”

 

A few months after Ian’s 24th birthday, they fill their shitty car with old Van Damme DVDs and drive twelve hours to New York. While Ian is driving, Mickey watches him laughing, singing along to the radio as the wind rustles his hair. The setting sun makes his eyes look like lime Jell-O, and his hair looks like fire that Mickey is no longer afraid of. Mickey watches Ian drive, stares at his long fingers grip the steering wheel, and _fuck_ , the list of things Mickey wouldn’t do for Ian has always been completely blank. 

 

Ian secures an EMT job in Hell’s Kitchen, a rough neighborhood in Manhattan that he didn’t know was real outside of Marvel comics. Mickey finds a less-than-stellar loft on 38th Street, with water-stained brick walls and rats living in the oven. But it’s theirs, and Ian and Mickey are determined. Mickey could count on one tattooed hand the number of times he's felt this determined.

 

Ian starts as a low-paid paramedic, sure, but eventually he becomes a decently-paid paramedic. Mickey spends every hour of the fucking day making their apartment livable; the pipes needed patching, the floorboards needed bracing, the radiator needed a complete fucking overhaul. Then, he moves on to picking tasteful rugs out of the trash, buying cheap but sturdy silverware, painting the walls. 

 

He paints the walls red. His favorite color. 

 

Mickey climbs out onto their fire escape on a humid August night, and watches the smoke from his cigarette dissipate out towards the shitty New Jersey skyline. He thinks to himself that, yeah, he needs to call Yev. 

 

A couple months later, Mickey is sitting on the fire escape again, talking to Yev—his _son_ — and he realizes that sickening feeling he used to feel when he thought of Yev is gone. He doesn’t see his father or Ian’s bloody face anymore, as he hears Yev chat semi-coherently while Svetlana rustles faintly in the background. Instead, he thinks he wants to be different for Yev, even if he’s far away. 

 

He knows his relationship with Yev is never going to be perfect. There’s too much shit there, and he’s been gone too long, and he already knows he’s never going back to Chicago. But he’ll call, and Yev can call whenever he wants, and their door will always be open if Yev wants to visit New York City sometime. 

 

During one of these calls, Mickey thinks how different it might be if he had one voluntarily. You know, a kid. A baby, or whatever. With Ian. 

 

Mickey is 30 years old when he first meets Poppy. All he sees when he looks at her is a Manhattan fire escape and a late-night vow to be a better dad than Terry. It’s not a high bar, but still. 

 

It takes hell to get her, and they really don't have the money to blow on unnecessary shit like adopting, but they do it anyway, and she’s here to stay. The world could pry her out of his cold, dead hands. 

 

Poppy Gallagher-Milkovich is everything Mickey never thought he could have. She has freckles like a fucking nightmare, and Mickey thinks he has finally found someone he loves more than Ian. 

 

Ian holds her in his arms, gently, feeling like he’s going to throw up because growing up gay in the Southside has always meant he’d never get to have this, he had convinced himself he _didn’t_ want this. But, here she is. Here Mickey is. Here they are, _together_ , hundreds of miles away from Chicago, with an apartment and a daughter. She is the deity he had been trying to preach about, all those years ago. She is what the Bible was missing. 

 

At the same time that Mickey is silently vowing not to turn into Terry, Ian is vowing not to turn into Monica. 

 

They don’t.

 

Poppy grows up, wildly and haphazardly, in a small Hell’s Kitchen apartment with two dads who have done a lot of fucked up shit. She grows up happy, and healthy, and entirely too functional if you consider her last name. 

 

But wait. Rewind, one more time. 

 

“Mickey,” Ian says.

 

Mickey looks up. It’s their first night with Poppy, and Mickey’s sitting on their worn couch, holding her in his arms. She’s cooing, reaching up for his face with grubby fingers.

 

“What’re you lookin’ at, firecrotch?”

 

Ian cocks his head, watching their tiny baby wiggle around in Mickey’s arms. He thinks of the first time they fucked, violent and scared in Mickey’s bedroom with a gun under the mattress. If those assholes could see them now, as adults, he isn’t sure what they’d think. He wants to tell Mickey that he’s the best thing that ever happened to him, that Poppy is probably going to throw up on him soon from her excitement, that he wants to get a dog for Poppy to grow up with, that this is everything he never thought he could have.

 

“I love you, Mick,” he says, instead. Softly. “Thank you.”

 

Mickey stills, for a moment, and blinks rapidly. He nods, cradling their daughter to his chest.

 

“You too, Ian. You too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read! I love Mickey and Ian's love story; it was very formative when I was growing up, so I wanted to share my thoughts about their post-9x06 life. It's got all my hallmarks: gratuitous New York City references, fairytale storylines, etc. 
> 
> I want to do a sequel to this fic, so let me know if that's something you'd be interested in. As always, I have no beta, I did not read this fic through even once, and that's how I like it. 
> 
> Farewell!


End file.
